


The Cat Himself Knows

by Delphi



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: BDSM, Backstory, Breathplay, Flogging, M/M, Medic Being Medic, Sounding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-10 14:32:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5589835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delphi/pseuds/Delphi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"Don't worry, Herr Heavy. I will be gentle."</em>
</p><p> </p><p>  <em>Mikhail looked up at him and sniffed dismissively, the goading glint in his eyes making Viktor’s heartbeat go pitter-patter. </em></p><p> </p><p>  <em>"Of course. Doktor is pussycat."</em></p><p> </p><p>(Or, Medic and the shiny things that capture his attention.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cat Himself Knows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fire_is_my_happy_place](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fire_is_my_happy_place/gifts).



> Title is borrowed from T.S. Eliot's _The Naming of Cats_.

Viktor dropped the needle on the record player. A quartet of strings filled his bedroom with the opening strains of a Mendelssohn opus. He hummed along, his left hand fingering invisible chords as his right fiddled with the volume knob on the amplifier. The music would do little to disguise the sounds that would follow, but it was only polite to make an effort when you lived communally. Besides, he had always thought Mendelssohn romantic.

Next, the mood lighting. He crossed the floor and switched on the surgical lamp borrowed from the infirmary. It flooded the bed with unflinching white light.

Mikhail grunted, squinting against the sudden glare.

“My apologies, Herr Heavy.” Viktor smiled and adjusted his glasses. “Aheh. I like to see what I’m working with.”

A snort was Mikhail’s only response, followed by a flexing of his massive biceps and pectorals that momentarily derailed Viktor’s train of thought. Viktor tilted his head slightly to one side as he stared, considering the expanse of bearskin canvas before him. Mikhail was a magnificent specimen under any circumstance, but he was presently displayed to full effect: completely naked, half-aroused in expectation, and shackled to the sturdy headboard by means of fetters around his wrists and a short length of grade 80 chain.

Wonderful. 

Viktor absently removed his coat and tossed it onto the chair in the corner. He peeled off the rest of his layers with measured efficiency, his vest and shirt dropping to the floor, followed by his undershirt, boots, trousers, and socks. Mikhail watched him, or at least the silhouette of him, from behind a veneer of stubborn stoicism, his gaze following Viktor’s hands down to the waist of his undershorts. Viktor caught a glimpse of pink—tongue against lower lip—as he slid the undershorts off and stepped out of them.

He warmed under Mikhail’s attention, and at the clean ‘snap’ as he pulled on his rubber gloves. He smiled again, this time baring his teeth as he advanced upon the bed.

"Don't worry, Herr Heavy. I will be gentle."

Mikhail looked up at him and sniffed dismissively, the goading glint in his eyes making Viktor’s heartbeat go pitter-patter. 

"Of course. Doktor is pussycat."

* * *

_He wakes in the night to the sound of the cat meowing at the back door._

_This is unusual. The cat is always put out after dinner, but this time she has been outside for days and days. This is because of the new baby. If she is allowed inside, she will climb into the cradle and smother him. Viktor thinks this sounds very wicked of the cat, but Mutti has explained, tiredly, that it is only because baby’s breath smells like milk, now go and be quiet somewhere, that’s a good boy._

_Viktor asked Vati when the cat will be allowed inside again, but Vati only scowled at him. He is angry all the time because the baby isn’t made right._

_The baby is called Leo. It is a family name, Oma says so. ‘Viktor’ is a family name too, which used to belong to his mother’s very great uncle, who lived a long time ago in Switzerland and was a famous scientist. Everything was very noisy the day Leo arrived. Oma and the doctor came over, and Viktor and Vati were put outside like the cat while Mutti made strange noises in her bedroom. It was exciting._

_The cat yowls again, and he hears Vati curse.The door to his parents’ room opens and Vati goes stomping down the hall to the kitchen. The window slams open and something lands in the garden. It sounds more like a slipper than a shoe, but it’s enough to scare the cat away. The footsteps come back. His parents’ door shuts heavily._

_Leo wakes and gives a thin, creaky cry in his cradle. Viktor sits up. When there are no more sounds, he leaves the warmth of his bed and goes to investigate. He stands over the cradle, looking down in the darkness at Leo’s scrunched-up face._

_He likes his baby brother, even if Leo can’t talk or play yet. He’s interesting. Viktor unwraps the swaddling blankets, which lets Leo wave his arms and legs like he’s swimming. One arm is like Viktor’s, but the other stops where an elbow should be. Viktor likes touching it. The skin is smooth, stretched tight over a knobbly bone. He’s tried to ask important questions about it, but that only makes Mutti cry and Vati swat him. Only Oma has explained that while Leo’s hair will grow in, his arm will not._

_Leo makes a funny squeaking sound when Viktor pokes his arm. He does it again and Leo starts to cry for real. He makes a big sound for such a little baby. It’s like when Viktor knocked over the mixing bowl and it broke into a hundred pieces with such a loud crash that Mutti heard it from the street._

_Viktor tries to fix the blankets. When that doesn’t work, he reaches into the cradle and tries to pick the baby up. This is harder than it looks. Leo is heavy, and his head lolls back for a moment, which makes him choke and cry even harder, but Viktor sways and steps back, and manages to hold onto him with both arms._

_“Shhh,” he says, rocking from side to side like he has seen Mutti and Tante Gertrud do with his cousin Herbert and only barely keeping from overbalancing. He’s pleased when he discovers that he can make Leo do this too, quieting him down to snuffly breathing just as easily as he made him cry. “Shhh.”_

* * *

His first instrument of the night was a scourge that would flay the flesh from the bones of lesser men. It was a handsome little tool, about the length of Viktor’s forearm, with seven strips of leather knotted at two-inch intervals. Viktor wielded it with a flexible wrist and not a little strength behind it, raining blows across Mikhail’s shoulders and upper arms until the muscles beneath quivered beautifully. On such a curiously thick hide, the knots left only lashes of pink in their wake that settled into a deep red. They matched Viktor’s gloves exactly, which gave him an aesthetic thrill.

Mikhail, for his part, scoffed at the efforts and went so far as to feign a yawn.

Viktor paused in the beating and frowned at him. It was not so much the baiting insult that perturbed him so much as the implication that this might seriously be all he had to offer.

"I am only warming up," he pointed out.

This earned him another sniff. “If you say so.”

The next pair of blows landed across Mikhail's pectorals in quick succession, catching his nipples. A sharp inhalation was almost lost in the smack of leather on skin, but Viktor had very keen ears. He smiled smugly as Mikhail’s jaw belatedly clenched.

“Aha…” He dragged the scourge teasingly down the center of Mikhail’s chest and over the curve of his stomach. “I think you liked that.”

Mikhail lifted his head and looked down at his erection with a look that said: 'Obviously.'

Viktor raised the scourge and gave him six more of the same, the straps cutting through the air to deliver three strikes on each side. Mikhail let out a hard grunt at the last, and the timbre of it went straight to Viktor’s loins as if someone had grabbed him with an urgent hand. He had drawn blood, trickles welling up from both of Mikhail’s nipples and streaking across his sternum where the leather had smudged it.

Beautiful. 

He swallowed hard, reaching down to touch himself for a moment, and then delivered just as brutal a beating to Mikhail’s tree trunk thighs. The scourge flew, barely marking the outer thighs but leaving very satisfying stripes along the more sensitive inner skin. Even more handsome than the marks was Mikhail’s squirming as he tried to keep the little flailing whips from catching his balls. Mikhail was gripping the chain, breathing harder now and flinching minutely away from each strike that landed too high. His cock was ferociously stiff, bobbing in a manner that might present a tempting target if Viktor didn’t have plans for it later.

The scourge bounced between Mikhail’s thighs twice more before Viktor tossed it aside in favour of climbing onto the bed. He straddled Mikhail’s hips and reached behind himself to drag his hands along the well-provoked heat of abused skin. His fingertips dug in, prompting a growl, before he leaned forward to kiss Mikhail on the forehead to measure his temperature.

"Mm, yes, very warm. Good."

Mikhail snorted, but there was a delay to it. His chest was heaving, and it was taking him some time to catch his breath. Viktor hardly gave him a chance to, kissing his mouth next with bruising passion. His teeth closed around Mikhail’s lower lip and sank in until he had earned another growl. He withdrew to admire his work, satisfied when Mikhail lifted his head as much as he could, chasing after his lips, seeking more.

“Ah, ah,” Viktor chided.

He moved down and lapped up that stray smear of blood. Mikhail had broken a light sweat, adding a tang of salt to the taste. Viktor cleaned the spot fastidiously and then fixed his mouth to Mikhail’s left nipple, breaking the skin back open with his tongue and sucking at the source as if it were mother’s milk. Mikhail hissed at the pressure and writhed beneath him, forcing Viktor to lock his knees to keep from being unseated. 

Viktor hummed in pleasure as Mikhail's cock pressed hot and urgent against his backside. Now that was more like it, he thought as he bit down hard enough to leave the perfect imprint of his front teeth, incisors, and canines in Mikhail’s skin.

* * *

_A large portion of Viktor’s university days are spent falling into and out of other people’s beds._

_He does not consider himself a bounder, and certainly not a cad. He simply enjoys sex. He is drawn to the intricacies of human anatomy. He likes the mess and the noise and the fascinating indignity of it all. He has never been inclined to sexual conquest for its own sake. Sex is interesting, and at university and in the city surrounding it, there are a number of interesting people who seem to share his aims if not his point of view._

_Anna is interesting. She had mild scoliosis when she was a girl and it gives her posture a slight asymmetrical lean that he finds very appealing. She does not like him to look at her back when they are making love, and so he looks with his hands, fingertips trailing down the crooked line of her spinal column as she bounces on top him._

_Frieda is also interesting, sharp-eyed and even sharper-tongued. Her sexual appetite is as capacious as his own, and she is the first to make him bruise and bleed, raking her fingernails along his backside when she wants him to fuck her harder._

_His roommate Konrad is slightly less interesting, but he is conveniently located, and he and his girlfriend Lotte like to have ménages à trois when they are not annoyed with Viktor for not washing the dishes._

_None of them, however, hold a candle to his pre-medical studies. In his third year, he becomes enraptured by the heroic age of medicine and is very nearly expelled for his extracurricular jaunts to the university hospital to unofficially observe. When he reaches the dissection portion of his anatomical studies course, he forgets about Anna and Frieda. He forgets about going out. He forgets about eating and sleeping._

_Konrad and Lotte bear his absence from their bed tolerantly. They continue to make an effort to invite him out dancing and occasionally point out the hypocrisy of a future doctor subsisting on nothing but pastries, black coffee, and cigarettes. Frieda ignores him. He fails a literature course._

_To his surprise in retrospect, it is Anna who turns up on his doorstep one day and slaps him across the face. It is a very good blow, hard enough to send him reeling and to cut open the inside of his cheek on his teeth. She is sobbing, her eyes like bloody glass as she thrusts into his hands a letter in which it is explained that he has cut out her still-beating heart and held it in his hands before cruelly discarding it._

_An attempt at amends begins promisingly when he brings her flowers the next day and tells her that he has read her letter many times. The attempt is forestalled when she learns that he has masturbated to it._

* * *

The medical sound he employed on Mikhail was the largest one he owned. He had picked it up at an estate sale—well, at the house of someone no longer alive—along with a collection of other interesting antique instruments some years ago, on a whim. He suspected the equipment may in fact have belonged to a veterinarian, not a doctor. Nonetheless, whether intended for man or horse, the sound was made almost to measure for Mikhail's prodigious endowment.

“Let’s see, now. Here we go…”

He warmed the steel rod between his hands so as not to be cruel and then coated it with petroleum jelly and teased its blunt, hooked end around the slit of Mikhail’s cock. Mikhail flinched. The motion was small, almost imperceptible, but it was satisfying as a whimper from a lesser man.

Viktor took firmer hold of Mikhail’s cock and watched his face, gaze unwavering as he slid the sound in slowly.

The groan that tore itself from Mikhail’s throat was music to rival the viola solo currently meandering through its closing bars. Mikhail proved unable to keep still, his spine and pelvis seemingly at cross-purposes as his urethra was stretched open around the lubricated steel.

"How does that feel?" Viktor inquired cheerfully, as if he were performing some minor checkup.

There was no response at first, only a shuddering breath. The chain holding Mikhail’s fetters twisted, clinking and then creaking alarmingly. Viktor savored the moment, touching himself.

"Very...much," Mikhail finally managed, his voice strained.

"Very much what?" Viktor pressed. He ran a fingertip around Mikhail’s swollen glans and then tapped on the looped end of the sound, sending a small reverberation along the steel all the way to Mikhail's bladder.

Mikhail shut his eyes tighter. Viktor could almost see him fumbling after his fleeing thoughts as his stoicism crumbled.

"заполненный," he gasped and then groped for the German. “Gefüllt.”

"Full," Viktor helpfully translated, squeezing out more lubricant and coating three of his gloved fingers thoroughly before pushing them into Mikhail’s ass. “Or ‘stuffed’, perhaps?”

A pained grunt was driven from deep in Mikhail's chest at the intrusion.

Viktor grinned and then put his mouth to better use. He drew his lips across Mikhail’s testicles, nuzzling and then sucking firmly. He caught the delicate skin of the sac between his lips and pulled as his fingers sought out Mikhail’s prostate and rubbed it insistently. The bass note of Mikhail’s groan almost made the bed vibrate, sending a delectable shiver through Viktor’s bones. He had another suck and then licked a long stripe up Mikhail’s shaft.

He glanced up once to enjoy the brief flicker of anguished anticipation in the line of Mikhail’s mouth before he dragged his tongue across the head of the sound, driving it in deeper.

“ _Unh!_ ”

The elicitation of the senseless cry was nearly enough to make Viktor swoon.

Perfect.

He sighed softly, dreamily, and opened wide for him. Sucking Mikhail’s cock never failed to be a delicious imposition. It stretched his jaw and threatened to choke him, the weight on his tongue and pressure at the back of his throat almost too much to take, and yet the discomfort was nothing compared to the pleasure of Mikhail’s tense, rapid breathing when he dragged his teeth. Even the thickest of hide had its sensitivities. Viktor worked at him hungrily, tongue lashing at his glans and teeth tugging at his foreskin. He squeezed Mikhail’s shaft around the unyielding sound and then pulled off with a lewd smack.

Mikhail's cock jerked violently, glinting wet and swollen almost purple. Viktor could not resist kissing it again and then stealing a little rub against it, straddling Mikhail’s thighs and frotting against him. He stroked them together, savoring the press of hot, damp skin and the brief touch of cold steel.

He waited just until Mikhail’s eyes had shut in pleasure before delicately grasping the sound. With the element of surprise on his side, he yanked the sound free with one pull and then laughed in delight at the bullish buck and roar that nearly threw him clear off the bed.

* * *

_America is a marvel._

_When Viktor’s work takes him abroad—or, more accurately, necessitates leaving Europe on a very short timeline—he makes the best of a bad situation and visits the places he has only ever seen in films. America is so new, so busy, so friendly, so big._

_He arrives in New York City in the summertime, when everything is heat and grime. On his first night out on the town, he hangs a camera around his neck and places a few pamphlets in his shirt pocket. He has discovered the pleasure of playing tourist, and he is equally open to being sexually propositioned and to being robbed. Flexibility is the key to a happy holiday._

_He has just turned the corner from a Chinese restaurant into a narrow alleyway when the footsteps that have been shadowing him for two blocks stop. The streetlight is partially blotted out behind him. There is the quiet ‘click’ of a switchblade._

_“Gimme your wallet. Now.”_

_Viktor smiles._

_A short while later, he carries his new friend back to his hotel room with the man’s arm slung across his shoulders. He flashes an apologetic smile at the concierge as he manhandles his guest to the elevator._

_“He has had too much to drink, I’m afraid. I will take him to lie down.”_

_Once in his room, he draws the curtains. He stows the man in the bathtub, makes a few trips to the ice machine, and then settles in for an evening of bathtub surgery. Before dawn, he parts way with his new friend by dropping him off at a service entrance at the nearby hospital so that his work can be properly appreciated. He trusts that they will find the patient in surprisingly stable condition for a man with a miniature rum bottle in place of one kidney, a pacemaker built out of a disassembled radio, and his hands and feet swapped._

_He thinks he could come to love New York City. There are so many interesting people._

* * *

Despite all the fuss, Mikhail's cock required little coaxing to bring it back to life. All it took was a few good rubs with a lubricated hand and the promise of sodomy, and it was soon back to full force and sinking to the hilt in Viktor’s ass. This was always a transporting experience. Viktor sat astride him, obscenely stretched and barely moving, fairly certain that it was his pancreas that the head of Mikhail’s cock was nudging so insistently.

He bit his lip and took a steadying breath. He leaned forward, humming as Mikhail’s cock shifted inside him, and then patted Mikhail tenderly on the cheek. “If I can still walk tomorrow, I will steal your liver.”

The only thing more wonderful than Mikhail’s ability to hurt people was the understanding between them that Viktor could and would hurt him even worse. All it took was the right poking (enough to draw blood), the right prying (enough to chivy his voice loose), and the right measure of credible threat (such as ready access to sedatives and a scalpel), and the iron bars of Mikhail’s control would bend. 

“No shooting,” Mikhail said, breathing like bellows as he began to move his hips.

Viktor moaned in happy approval as he was speared even deeper. He watched the cautious pleasure soften Mikhail’s expression, loosening something about the mouth and weighing down the eyelids. He lifted himself slightly, aiming to enjoy the slow drag of Mikhail’s cock inside him and then the precarious stretch as he reached the thick root once more.

“Faster,” he said, his breath catching when Mikhail obliged.

The bed began to creak with the effort, slats sagging and mattress springs squeaking with the accelerating bounce of their not-inconsiderable combined weight.

"Are you a man or are you a mouse?” Viktor teased. “Because all I'm hearing from this bed are little mouse sounds. Squeak, squeak, squea— _ach!_ ”

His eyes crossed as Mikhail slammed up into him, and he laughed aloud. “Better!”

The terrain beneath him shifted as Mikhail planted his feet and bucked again. The dozen thrusts that followed were enough to shake the earth and make Viktor see stars. He put a hand around Mikhail’s throat to brace himself, using the other to stroke himself vigorously. A made-to-scale Adam’s apple bobbed under his palm as Mikhail swallowed hard. 

“Good.” Viktor sighed, exerting more pressure. “Very good.”

The conversation that followed was an old beloved one. Viktor’s hand tightened around Mikhail’s throat and Mikhail fucked him with everything he had, coming perilously close to breaking the bed with the ferocity of his thrusting. Viktor’s hand eased and Mikhail was granted respite to have a little rest and breathe again. There were not many words involved, but the music was nearly drowned out by the clamor of the bed, Viktor’s heated moans, and the strangled rasp of Mikhail’s exerted breathing.

“Good,” he said again, his own breathing coming faster now as he rode the next wave of frantic thrusts to the edge of climax. “Good, ach, so good…”

Mikhail’s face was growing redder, the color spreading out from Viktor’s grip. His eyes squeezed tightly shut and then opened again, wet, his pupils eclipsing their irises despite the brightness of the lights. 

Sublime. 

“Beautiful man,” Viktor crooned. "So good to me. Do you want to come?”

There was little way for Mikhail to nod with Viktor pinning him down by the throat, but he managed it, and quickly.

Viktor beamed at him. “Good. Do it now, or I put that sound back in and you'll come in your kidneys."

With that, his tightened his grip and pressed down hard enough that Mikhail had perhaps twenty seconds in which to comply. He did not need to doubt him. Mikhail let loose with a wild ride that put his previous efforts to shame. His body slammed into Viktor’s again and again, his cock driving deep and a groan of agonized triumph breaking past the merciless clamp of Viktor’s hand. 

Viktor laughed in vicarious dizziness as he felt the proof of Mikhail’s climax adding slickness to his thrusts. His other hand moved faster, bringing himself off with such lustiness that he thought he might put out his back. His semen lashed across Mikhail’s bruising chest, running white among marks of red and purple and completing the picture. 

“Боже мой,” Mikhail gasped, ragged-voiced, when Viktor let go of his throat. 

“Mm,” Viktor agreed, pulling off him slowly. Despite tightening up, there was simply too much, and he felt Mikhail’s seed dripping down his thigh. 

He grabbed the headboard and pulled himself forward, seeing out those last contractions of pleasure against the stubble of Mikhail’s cheek and the heat of his questing mouth. The final drops of his spending were smeared against Mikhail’s lips, and then he further descended the mountain to kneel astride Mikhail’s head on the pillow and let him clean up the mess he had made.

The heat of Mikhail’s tongue on his hole sent another shiver through him. He moaned softly again, a sound which turned into a few hummed bars as he found his place in the music again. His fingers played with the chain where it now lay slack, following it down to the fetter, and then the back of Mikhail’s uncurled hand with unrestrained affection.

* * *

_Viktor leaves Washington DC when he tires of being a glorified aquatic veterinarian for an employer overly fond of trap doors suspended over shark tanks. The pay was good, but he did not become a doctor for the money. There is only so much boredom a man of science can be expected to tolerate. He comes west to Las Vegas for an employment fair, on a tip that there will be companies in attendance with generous research budgets, negotiable ethical standards, and a disinclination to run background checks._

_While navigating through the rows of booths and crowds of men in piecemeal military costumes, he is distracted by the display belonging to a company hiring security for what he is fairly certain is a virus farm. He is therefore not watching where he is going when he turns around and walks straight into a wall of flesh._

_The wall does not budge. It only grunts something that sounds like an apology._

_Viktor straightens his glasses, which were knocked askew by the collision. Then, in a turn of events almost unprecedented since age seventeen, he finds himself having to look up._

_What he finds before him is a behemoth. The man is an obvious anomaly: not merely tall at six and a half feet, but as broad as an ox across the shoulders, with arms thicker than most men’s thighs. His head is shaved, and his broad jaw is already dark with stubble even though it is barely noon. His massive frame strains a tight sweater at the seams, outlining every muscle great and small that Viktor memorized in anatomy class._

_“Aheh,” Viktor says, his attention immediately diverted from biological warfare. “My apologies.”_

_The man blinks, seemingly more surprised by the apology than by the collision. He looks Viktor up and down and then shrugs. “Is no problem.”_

_His accent is charming, and his voice is impossibly deep. Very high levels of testosterone, Viktor thinks, resisting the urge to twirl a lock of hair around his finger like a schoolgirl. When the man makes to step away, Viktor follows him, cutting off his escape._

_"We haven't been formally introduced, and this may be a little forward, but would you be interested in providing me with a blood sample? I would be most happy to run a hormone panel."_

_The man’s impressive brow creases. "A blood sample? You are with the TFI?"_

_Viktor stares blankly for a moment. "With who?"_

_"TFI? The little girl at the booth said there is physical exam tomorrow. You are not with her?"_

_He weighs the likelihood of getting what he wants by telling the truth against the likelihood of getting away with it if he tells a little fib. As is usually the case, he opts for the latter. "Oh, ja! The first one. Yes, I am with TFI. I would very much like to carry out your physical."_

_He smiles very broadly in what he believes is a professional and trustworthy manner._

_The man nods uncertainly. "Da. I will see you at clinic."_

_"Yes. The clinic. Of course. Not mein hotel room. That wouldn't...make any sense." Having established this, Viktor nods smartly and stands up at his straightest, offering a handshake. "I will see you at the clinic tomorrow."_

_The hand encompasses his own like none other has since he was a small boy. It is every bit as warm as he thought it would be, and marked by interesting calluses. Its grip is careful—not limp, but certainly restrained, as if its owner is very aware of his own strength._

_Viktor is left breathless with the thought of opening that man up and finding out how he works. In the wake of their parting, he looks around in search of this 'little girl'. He has until morning to find out who or what is a TFI._

* * *

Viktor turned off the record player and the surgical lamp, making the room dark and quiet. Eventually, he remembered where he left the key to the shackles. 

“Bad man,” Mikhail said, fondness in his hoarse voice as he flexed his wrists. He felt curiously at the dents left in the slat of the headboard and then settled back down with an arm around Viktor.

Viktor lay against him, idly playing with his nipples to make them bleed again. Mikhail did him the favor of briefly closing his eyes in what might have been a wince or only a slow blink, but otherwise seemed to be in the place he went after a good going-over, lazing like a sleeping giant under a mountain. 

"Who is a pussycat now?" Viktor prodded.

Mikhail was apparently too sated to rise to the bait and merely hummed. "You. Leaving sparrow heads on doorstep. 'Do not pet me now, do not pet me now - no, pet me now.' Bare belly, then sharp claws. I kept cat. I know these things."

Viktor snorted and made to reply, but then Mikhail suddenly shifted. A hand settled in Viktor's hair, thick fingers sliding through the locks and brushing lightly over his scalp until he closed his eyes in contentment. 

Well. Fair point, perhaps.


End file.
